Jayne Mansfield
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jayne Mansfield (April 19, 1933 - June 29, 1967) was an American actress and sex symbol. Famed for her platinum-blond hair and hourglass figure, she emerged during the 1950s appetite for glamorous sex symbols led by Marilyn Monroe. Indeed, in her first few starring roles Mansfield was courted by 20th Century Fox as a replacement for a then-misbehaving Monroe. However, Mansfield's Hollywood film career proved fleeting and after lead roles in a few major Hollywood films the good roles in major projects dried up; most of her later films were independent films or low-budget comedies filmed in Europe.
Early life
She was born Vera Jayne Palmer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of Herbert William Palmer (1904-1936) and Vera Jeffrey Palmer (1903-2000).
It is not clear if her parents, both Palmers, were distant cousins.[citation needed] The maiden name of Jayne's maternal grandmother was Jeffrey. When Jayne was three years old, her father, a lawyer, suddenly died of a heart attack. After his death, her mother worked as a school teacher to support them. In 1939, Vera married Harry Lawrence "Tex" Peers (1916-1997), and the family moved to Dallas, Texas. Jayne could play the violin by the time she was seven, and would stand in the driveway of her home playing for passersby. She also enjoyed singing, and would give enthusiastic performances. After discovering fan magazines, she would cut out the glamorous photographs of movie stars and hang them in her bedroom.
Jayne attended Highland Park High School in Dallas. Then, at seventeen, she married her first husband, Paul Mansfield, and moved to Austin. She studied dramatics at Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Austin. While attending the University of Texas, she won several beauty contests, with titles that included "Miss Photoflash," "Miss Magnesium Lamp" and "Miss Fire Prevention Week." The only title she ever turned down was "Miss Roquefort Cheese," because she believed that it "just didn't sound right." In 1954, they moved to Los Angeles and she studied dramatics at UCLA.
Husbands and Children
Mansfield had three husbands - Paul Mansfield (married May 10, 1950-divorced 1958); actor and Hungarian bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay (married January 13, 1958-divorced 1964); and director Matt Cimber (married September 24, 1964-divorced 1966).
She and Paul had one child, Jayne-Marie Mansfield (born November 8, 1950); she and Mickey had three children, Miklós Jeffrey Hargitay (born December 21, 1958), Zoltan Anthony Hargitay (born August 1, 1960) and Mariska Magdolina Hargitay (born January 24, 1964); and she and Matt had one child, Antonio Raphael Ottaviano Cimber (or Anthony Richard) (born October 18, 1965).
Her marriage to Paul faltered when she began a romance with muscleman and NABBA Mr. Universe of 1955, Mickey Hargitay -- who was himself married as well. Mansfield and Hargitay were married the same day her divorce became final.
After they married, she and Hargitay bought a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion formerly owned by Rudy Vallee at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills for $75,000, which they called the "Pink Palace." As its name implies, the mansion was painted pink, had pink decorations, a bed with heart-shaped canopy and marble cupids above the bedstead that was surrounded by pink fluorescent lights, pink fur on the floors of the bathrooms, a pink heart-shaped bathtub, and a fountain spurting pink champagne. Hargitay, who was a plumber and carpenter before he got into bodybuilding, built its famous pink heart-shaped swimming pool. Engelbert Humperdinck bought the Pink Palace in the 1970s. In 2002, he sold it for about $4,000,000 to developers and it was torn down in November of that year.
One biographer quotes Jayne as saying that Paul was not Jayne-Marie's father, but that she married him rather than getting an abortion as she was personally opposed to it. Jayne-Marie appeared in Playboy July 1976. Actor Nelson Sardelli is rumoured to have fathered Mariska. But Hargitay apparently never questioned the girl's paternity and raised her as his own. Mariska has since become an actress with a list of movie and TV credits that would undoubtedly make her mother proud.
Film Career and Celebrity
Mansfield wanted to be a movie star. For her efforts, she was rewarded with walk-ons on television. She was always willing to make appearances and do practically anything for publicity. She was rumored to have gotten her first TV job by slipping a note to the producer that read "36, 22, 35."
Her movie career began with bit parts. She had a small role in Female Jungle (1954). She then went to Warner Bros. and did a small role in Pete Kelly's Blues starring Jack Webb, which brought her favorable attention. In January 1955, she was part of a publicity drive for Howard Hughes' RKO movie Underwater! starring Jane Russell. In February 1955, Mansfield was "Playmate of the Month" in Playboy, a men's magazine she would pose for several times over the ensuing years.
After two more movies at Warners, including a film called "Illegal" which gave her a featured role as a hitman's mistress as well as holding her own against Edward G. Robinson, she went to New York and played screen siren Rita Marlowe, a thinly disguised satire on Marilyn Monroe in the Broadway production of George Axelrod's comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1955). Wearing only a towel, she would rise to answer the phone, flaunting as much of her large-breasted, voluptuous physique as she could. She received the Theatre World Award of 1956 for her performance.
Back on the West Coast, she appeared on TV game shows and starred in The Girl Can't Help It (1956). On May 3, 1956, she signed a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. After a couple more movies, she reprised her role of Rita Marlowe in the 1957 movie version of Rock Hunter co-starring Tony Randall. The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter were critically acclaimed and popular successes and are largely considered classics today.
In October 1957, Mansfield went on a sixteen-country tour of Europe for 20th Century Fox. She was presented to Queen Elizabeth on November 4. "You are so beautiful," she said to the Queen, who replied, "So are you."
Mansfield won a Golden Globe in 1957 for Most Promising Newcomer - Female, along with Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood. However her squeaky voice, eye-popping figure, and limited range made her tough to cast. Still, she was widely considered Marilyn Monroe's number-one rival as Hollywood's top blonde sex symbol in a crowded field of contenders that also included Mamie Van Doren, Cleo Moore, Diana Dors, and Sheree North. Even with her career drifting into low-budget comedies she remained highly visible and she won a Golden Laurel in 1959 for Top Female Musical Performance for the comedy Western The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958).
Mansfield worked outside the motion picture industry as well. She headlined in Las Vegas with her own nightclub act, toured military bases with Bob Hope for the USO and released a live album titled Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas. She did a number of guest spots on television: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Jack Benny Show, The Steve Allen Show, Burke's Law, Down You Go and The Match Game.
Later career
Despite her monumental publicity, good film roles dried up and when Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, the craze for blonde bombshells was well and truly over but Mansfield kept busy in series of low-budget comedies and melodramas. These were mainly independently produced, and many were filmed in the UK and Europe. She turned down the role of Ginger Grant in the TV sitcom Gilligan's Island because "I am a movie star." In 1963 she posed nude for Playboy magazine on the set of the movie comedy Promises, Promises. It was the first time a big-name actress had been so exposed for the camera, as Mansfield cavorted totally bare in front of the film crew, her co-star (Tommy Noonan), and members of her personal staff. In one notorious series of photographs, Jayne stands naked, staring intently at her breast, as does her male secretary and a hair stylist, then grasps it in her hand and lifts it high. Some critics said it was the most erotic series of photographs ever published in the magazine. That issue sold out and resulted in publisher Hugh Hefner being faced with an obscenity charge, later dropped. Despite such publicity, by the mid-1960s her movie career was all but over.
When her marriage to Hargitay (who protested her appearance in Playboy) broke up, she married Matt Cimber, who had directed her in a stage production of Bus Stop in Yonkers, New York. Cimber took over the management of her career during their brief marriage.
Some allege that she became involved with the International Church of Satan,[citation needed] founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey, and that she had an affair with LaVey. It should be noted that LaVey's public claims of an affair with her apparently began only after her death. LaVey had made made similar claims of an ongoing affair with Marilyn Monroe, and as with Mansfield, he did not make these claims publicly until after Monroe's death.
Death
In 1967, her life was moving at full speed. Her time was split between a Southern nightclub tour and the production of Single Room, Furnished, a drama directed by Cimber. She split from Cimber and work on Single Room, Furnished was suspended. Mansfield continued her nightclub tour and started dating her divorce lawyer, Sam Brody, who was also working to challenge Cimber's demand for full custody of his and Mansfield's child together.
Mansfield died before the movie was completed. After an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mansfield, Sam Brody, and their driver that night Ronnie Harrison, along with Mickey Jr., age eight, Zoltan, age six, and Mariska, age three (now of Law and Order: SVU fame), headed to New Orleans, where she was to appear on a TV interview later that day.
On June 29 at approximately 4:07 a.m., Mansfield died in a car accident on U.S. Highway 90 (Chef Menteur Highway) just past The Rigolets, in the far stretches of swampy, uninhabited New Orleans East on a tricky curve on a section of road just inches from the swamp on either side. She was riding in the front seat of the 1966 Buick Electra with Harrison and Brody, and her children were sleeping in back, as the roadway became obscured by a white haze from a distant mosquito fogger, which prevented Harrison from discerning the presence of a slow-moving tractor-trailer ahead. They crashed into the truck and slid under it as the top of her car was sheared back. Though all three children survived with minor injuries, as they were cushioned from serious harm, the adults were instantly killed, as was Mansfield's pet Chihuahua. Daughter Mariska Hargitay has a scar on her head from the accident, but has no memory of what happened that night.
Erroneously, it was said that Mansfield was decapitated in the accident. This is not true, though she did suffer severe head trauma. This urban legend was possibly spawned by the fact that her blonde wig flew off her head and was seen in police photographs.
Her funeral was held on July 3, 1967 in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, officiated by a Methodist minister. She is interred in Fairview Cemetery, just southeast of Pen Argyl. Though her remains are in Fairview Cemetery, and the graves of her mother and stepfather are beside hers, a memorial cenotaph is in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California, in her honor. Shortly after the funeral, Hargitay sued her estate for over $275,000 to support the children. He married his current wife that September.
Jayne Mansfield has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6328 Hollywood Boulevard.
In an A&E Network Biography program about Jayne Mansfield, the late Tony Randall, who had worked with her in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? had talked about how friendly and down-to-earth Jayne was. He said that when tourists would drive by her mansion, she might just pop on out, waving and greeting them. As Randall put it, "She was a hoot!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Mansfield
